At Freddie’s. Simon Callow
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to know how they were likely to behave, but not why. Anxious though she was to do nothing of the sort, she went to consult Freddie, who said, ‘I’m glad you’ve turned to me, dear, very glad.’
Hannah explained that she was distressed at the thought of Mattie’s home life, if it could be called that, and hardly knew whether he ought to be encouraged or kept under.
‘It’s not that he’s deprived, exactly. He gets one pound ten a week to spend on himself.’
‘Considerably more than that, in fact,’ said Freddie. ‘That’s one of his troubles, yes. Wealth produces its fantasies, like poverty.’
‘Well, what fantasies does he have?’
‘They take various forms. Unfortunately he has noticed that there are more important things than money. I may have taught him that myself. I’ll have to have a word with his father.’
‘What father?’ Hannah asked.
It turned out that Mattie’s father was the prosperous owner of a chain of dress-shops, Ragtime Ltd, and that his mother, who was as shrewd as they come, was actively concerned with the business. A luxurious home was maintained in Hendon, Mattie was their only child, though Mr and Mrs Stewart were often abroad. And the agent, the one room to go home to, the Hoffmann presser? ‘He must have been thinking of Jonathan, dear. Jonathan doesn’t seem to have been very necessary to his parents. We never hear anything about them, anyway; we have to make all his arrangements with the agents.’
‘But he’s only nine,’ said Hannah.
‘A little bit of anxiety there too, dear. He seems to be growing rather slowly. They’ve been paying for him for two years, and they wonder when they’ll get a return on their money.’
‘What do you say to them, Miss Wentworth?’
‘Shakespeare, dear, Shakespeare or nothing. I remind them that you only get a great actor once every fifty years, or, indeed, a great man of any kind. And without a great theatre you never have a great nation … Of course, you want your actors tall enough to be visible from the back of the stalls. They’ve paid to see them, dear. But they’ll only have to wait a little longer for Jonathan.’
Casual and lordly in his attitude to everyone about him, unless he hoped to get something out of them, Mattie was none the less obsessed by Jonathan. Constantly he tried to manoeuvre himself into what should have been his natural position of patron. But Jonathan was self-contained. Undemanding by temperament, he made do with very little. Mattie himself needed a number of rapidly changing items – sharp jackets, a new trannie, cigarettes in fifties, and so on. Jonathan gravely admired these things, indeed appeared to be impressed by them, but did not covet them. What is the use of admiration without envy? But Jonathan, secreting himself and watching the world as a passing show, appeared to have learned something so important that his whole time was taken up in considering it. Mattie would have liked to knock him black and blue and bend his little finger back to make him tell what it was. Only at rare intervals would Jonathan join in with him, as a kind of double act, as on the evening when they teased Hannah. Then Mattie became dangerously exalted.
In almost every observable way he was Jonathan’s superior – older, better looking, more intelligent, born to success in the profession – not a good voice, it’s true, it was light and rusty, but a wonderfully expressive dark-browed face which would carry across any theatre, and, young as he was, a completely finished personality, exactly the same on stage and off. Under his affectations he was as hard as iron. That was his chief asset, and assets are there to earn interest. Mattie looked you straight in the face, and then turned away with a caressing sidelong glance which in middle age would doubtless become horrible to see, but what triumphs, in the meantime, it would bring him!
He showed off perpetually. Jonathan, on the other hand, was silent for long periods, and was the only child at Freddie’s who had no audition piece. He could no more be tempted into a display than a hibernating animal. Then, when he emerged, apparently knowing his own times and seasons, he would become something quite other, doing a speech or two, or dividing himself in order to turn into (for example) two elderly men he had seen through an office window, one short, one tall, getting ready to go home, and helping each other on with their coats. They dusted each other off, the short one stretched, the tall one discreetly bent down. All this was not so hard to imitate, but Jonathan suggested also their tenderness for each other’s infirmities and a certain anxiety, about which he could have known nothing. After a bit the scene disappeared as he subsided, sticking his chewing gum back into his circular cheek.
As an actor, he needed an audience, but did not mind who it was or what they said. This drove Mattie into a fury of activity. Indifference is an unfair defence, and amiable indifference – because the little boy liked him and was always glad to see him – is the most unfair of all. He could not be satisfied until Jonathan had got into some sort of trouble. Then would be the moment to rush luxuriously to his assistance. But there were so few opportunities, one must be continually on the watch. Prompting, for instance, was never needed. If Jonathan didn’t know his lines (and he was not a quick study) he smiled, and read them from the book. If he had no dinner money, the girls gave him Fruity Snacks. Once or twice, however, he complained of a stomach ache, although in a detached way, as though the pain was the responsibility of someone else. Then Mattie was in his glory. Lay him down near the radiator, Miss, and keep him warm, I know just what he has to have, I’ll go down to Miss Blewett for the Bisodol, you want to be careful, he might get a lot worse quite suddenly, we had to get a stomach pump to one of the cast on Saturday. – He was thanked of course, but it was never enough. He could not master the half-sleepy mysterious gum-chewing little rat of a Jonathan, or exact the word of approval he wanted. Later he rolled him over on the washroom floor and banged his round head on the concrete as though cracking a nut. ‘Has that cured your bellyache?’ – Jonathan considered, and said he would tell him later. Mattie was outraged. And yet his dissatisfaction showed that he was not quite lost. It was the tribute of a human being to the changeling, or talent to genius.
All this was indoors. In the street, it became nothing. Mattie, at twelve, could not associate there with a nine-year-old. The illusion, which was the most genuine thing in his life, vanished. His glittering bike carried him away, while Jonathan was left kicking a can along the gutter.
Freddie was also obliged to court Jonathan, whose round gaze met hers with unblinking politeness, but no more than that. When distinguished visitors arrived at the school (and this happened quite often, opening up yet further the mystery of Freddie’s past, for all these people came because they had once known her well, and therefore couldn’t say no to her now) the children were usually called upon for a display. Jonathan was never anxious to be produced. He brought neither his joys nor his sorrows to Freddie. More woundingly still, he took them to the Bluebell. Only she could soothe his anxiety over the matter of growing tall and starting work. They would sit together and play a gambling game with liquorice allsorts. Miss Blewett handled the lurid sweeties with a certain air, having worked, she said, in younger days at a casino at Knocke-le-Zoute. When the game had got quietly under way, she would make kindly suggestions. Perhaps Jonathan might be auditioned for this year’s Peter Pan. Christmas threatened, the Peter Pan season would start soon. Mattie and Gianni had both got started as Lost Boys.
Peter Pan himself, of course, was obliged never to grow up, so that he could always have fun. The problem at a stage school is not to grow up, in order to earn money. Jonathan was well aware of the threatening years ahead. Between the ages of twelve and sixteen it is very hard to find work in the profession.
‘But you ought to talk to Miss Wentworth more,’ Miss Blewett told him. ‘After all, we expect great things of you, and it’s great things that she’s always stood out for. You ought to be with her now, really.’
‘You wouldn’t like it if he was,’ said Mattie, hovering.
One late afternoon, however, when Freddie was approaching the rehearsal room, Jonathan stood in front of her, faintly troubled, and said: ‘I don’t think you ought to go in there, Miss Wentworth.’
‘For what reason?’
He